Dominica DeGrandis - Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow

PRAISE

I love this bookDominica DeGrandis talks about the chronic problems we all have in knowledge work and technology work in a way that is breezy, familiar, and often irreverent, but also shows off decades of learnings and concrete techniques we can quickly adopt, both at work and at home. Also wonderfully rewarding is when DeGrandis describes the theory of why these practices work, in a way that is accessible and enlightening.

GENE KIM, researcher, founder of IT Revolution, and coauthor of The DevOps Handbook and The Phoenix Project

The most practical book Ive seen on making processes lean. Dominicas deep experience coaching companies is fully on display as she walks the reader through a series of exercises to find waste and eliminate itor, in her terms, to catch those sneaky time thieves in the act. Read this on a Sunday and youll want to start trying out the exercises on Monday!

MARK SCHWARTZ, former CIO of US Citizenship and Immigration Services and author of The Art of Business Value and A Seat at the Table

It is about time someone addresses time theft (aka the perfect crime) head on. Not only does Dominica provide a lot of the why behind the forces that cause us to make bad decisions about our time, she also provides ideas of what to do about them. I wish I had this book when I took my first management job!

JULIA WESTER, Lean Consultant and Blogger at EverydayKanban.com

Many of us wear our busyness as a badge of honor. In Making Work Visible, Dominica DeGrandis shows us how we can make hidden work-in-process visible, to clearly see the effect it has on our ability to get things done. Once we can see it, she dives deep into the hidden aspects of our WIP that steal our time, energy, and productivity, along with strategies for combating each of them. Making Work Visible helps us to take a step back from all that busyness and really see.

CHRIS HEFLEY, Chief Revenue Officer, Retrium

Making
Work
Visible

EXPOSING
TIME THEFT TO
OPTIMIZE
WORK & FLOW

DOMINICA DEGRANDIS

FOREWORD BY TONIANNE DEMARIA

IT REVOLUTION PRESS
PORTLAND, OR

25 NW 23rd Pl, Suite 6314
Portland, OR 97210

Copyright 2017 by Dominica DeGrandis

All rights reserved, for information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, IT Revolution Press, LLC, 25 NW 23rd Pl, Suite 6314, Portland, OR 97210

First Edition
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover and interior book design by Belinda Bowling, Joy Stauber, and Richard Weaver, Stauber Brand Studio
Cover and interior illustrations by Dominica DeGrandis
Author photograph by Laurence G. Cohen

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948984

ISBN: 978-1942788157
ePub ISBN: 978-1942788164
Kindle ISBN: 978-1942788188
Web PDF ISBN: 978-1942788171

Publishers note to readers: Many of the ideas, quotations, and paraphrases attributed to different thinkers and industry leaders herein are excerpted from informal conversations, correspondence, interviews, conference round-tables, and other forms of oral communication that took place over the development and writing of this book. Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases or for information on booking authors for an event, please visit our website at www.ITRevolution.com.

MAKING WORK VISIBLE

I dedicate this book to my greatest inspirers: my four brilliant children, Rachel, Robert, Angelo, and Augustus. You teach me more about life and joy than any career accomplishment possibly could.

CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES

Introduction: Work and Flow

Part 1: The Five Thieves of Time

Part 2: How to Expose Time Theft to Optimize Workflow

Part 3: Metrics, Feedback, and Circumstances

Conclusion: Calibration

FOREWORD

Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.
Ambrose Bierce

So about that internet meme, the one assuring our frazzled selves that everyone has the same twenty-four hours in their day as .

Id like to nip that bit of condescension in the bud and offer an emphatic, Not quite. While many of our business role models are in fact driven by a seemingly superhuman work ethic supported by 100+ hour work weeks, they nevertheless have an advantage over us mere mortals. While the number of minutes available to us each day might be the same, control over what we do with those hours differs significantly. When Elon Musk is faced with too much work-in- progress (WIP) , he has the authority to delegate, deprioritize, or simply say no . When variation rears its head and a well-thought- out strategic plan no longer aligns with the organizations needs, Sheryl Sandberg has the ability to switch gears. And when Jeff Bezos is confronted with conflicting priorities, it is likewise doubtful he needs to seek direction via a convoluted bureaucracy to gain clarity over which course to follow.

When these things happen to us (and lets face it, they often do), were faced with a very different set of repercussions than those of our billionaire counterparts.

So what about us? In the absence of unbridled agency and an extensive support staff, how do we do all that needs to get done, when it needs to get done, without sacrificing quality or our sanity in the process? In a culture that exalts productivity and perpetuates the mythology of multitasking, how do we maximize our time and our workflow to the point that our effort and our energy yields the greatest impact? Most importantly, how do we do all of that and still have time for living?